It’s a bit of a paradox. Time moves so quickly that it seems impossible to keep up with everything that is unfolding. Stories that would have dominated the news cycle for months are now played out in the space of an afternoon, buried beneath the next big story and the next shocking revelation. However, despite how fast everything is moving, this has a numbing effect. The constant barrage of news and information makes things feel so much slower and longer than they would otherwise. 2018 moved so fast that it was impossible to keep up, but it also seemed to last an eternity.

As a result, seemingly ordinary periods of time can be stretched and distorted. The window between theatrical release and home media roll out has been getting shorter and shorter for most films, occasionally to the consternation of cinema chains. There are only a few scant months between the premiere of a film and its release as digital download or hard copy. Normally, that is not a long or extended period of time. In 2018 terms, it is an eternity. So much can change in that window.

I first saw Isle of Dogs in a crowded cinema during the Audi Dublin International Film Festival. The snow was falling outside. Although I did not realise it from the safety of the cinema, buses were being cancelled. Getting home afterwards would be an oddity, and I would spend the next four days locked in my house, staring at idyllic and unspoiled white snow. At the time, I really loved Isle of Dogs. It stayed with me, haunting and beautiful. The imagery was arresting, the compositions impressive, the simple story at the heart of the film an engaging appeal to empathy in a world increasingly bereft of it.

I would watch the film for a second time months later, at home. I wasn’t quite ready for how much more effectively the film hit my on rewatch. It was not that the film itself had changed in those three months. Instead the world around it had. In the cinema, my heart went out to those dogs trapped in cages. I was moved in the way that anybody with any compassion would be moved on seeing these innocent and loving creatures locked in steel boxes and casually dumped somewhere out of sight. At home, I almost cried.

Obviously, director Wes Anderson could never have anticipated this particular timely resonance, but it makes sense. Anderson is a constantly growing and evolving film maker, both in terms of the style in which he operates and the themes with which he works. Anderson has extrapolated outward from the more intimate and personal stories of early films like Bottle Rocket and Rushmore towards broader social commentary in films like Moonrise Kingdom and The Grand Budapest Hotel.

This theme carries over to Isle of Dogs. If The Grand Budapest Hotel was set in a decaying Europe succumbing to the lure of fascism, Isle of Dogs turns its gaze to a hyper-nationalist Japan with obvious echoes of the mid-twentieth century. Of course, the idea of using animals as a vehicle for exploring racism and xenophobia is tricky at the best of times, as demonstrated by well-intentioned films like Zootopia. However, Isle of Dogs manages that delicate balancing act, most obviously through the translation convention of having the canine characters speak English.

Isle of Dogs is, at its core, a story about a boy and his dog. It is a tale about the lengths to which a young child will go so that he might be reunited with his family. It is a beautiful, imaginative, playful fairy tale. It is enlivened by a set of great performances. The title itself is a delightful play on words. However, what I keep coming back to is that heartbreaking image of family members locked in cages and dumped where the world cannot see them.